Monthly Archives: April 2012

This post goes into great detail explaining how transfer tape works. But if you’re more of a video sort of gal, check out the following Video from our resident “Man Crafters.”

Man Crafters: Vinyl Transfer Tape: Join “Man Crafters,” Todd and Kermit as they show you tips and tricks of why you cannot live without good transfer tape when using VINYL. This new Manufacturer Mini Series is entertaining and helpful!

Transfer tape is used for getting your cut and weeded vinyl design off the backing paper and onto your final substrate, keeping it together and even. Once you have cut your design in vinyl, take your X-acto knife and weed away the excess vinyl. Get a sheet of transfer tape and lay it down over the design very lightly, sometimes it is helpful to have 2 people each take a side to avoid it sticking down too quickly or uneven.

Take your squeegee and start in the middle of the transfer tape, using up and down strokes with medium pressure, move out to the edges of the design. Once you have it down go over the entire thing with a bit more pressure tomake sure the vinyl is held securely to the transfer tape.

Start pulling from the edge, and lift the transfer tape and vinyl away from the backing paper until it is completely separate. You are now ready to place the design on your substrate. Once you have it even and ready to apply take your squeegee and repeat the up and down strokes from the middle to the edges again with medium to hard pressure. Once the entire thing is done, pull the transfer tape away from the substrate leaving the vinyl securely in place. Throw away the transfer tape, it will not be used again. Transfer Tape is a great way to ensure an even and successful outcome to any vinyl design, especially lettering!

A squeegee is used to apply transfer tape to vinyl as well as vinyl to your final substrate. Lay down a sheet of transfer tape to your cut and weeded vinyl, start in the middle and move the squeegee toward the edges in up and down strokes until the entire vinyl design is covered. Pull the transfer tape and vinyl off the backing paper and apply to substrate. Once you have the vinyl positioned where you want it, use your squeegee in the same up and down strokes from the middle out to the edges. Once you have covered the entire surface area, pull the transfer tape off, the vinyl should be held securely in place. These work much better that a credit card!

Stabilo Pencils are a great tool to have when you need an ultra removable marking device. You can write on paper, glass, plastic, metal, mirrors and paint, it comes right off with a little glass cleaner or any type of liquid cleaner. They are often used to make level lines on the walls or substrate you will be applying vinyl to. We highly suggest this be a part of your vinyl accessory kit.

Join our favorite “Man Crafters” in their last episode of the, Brookie Craft’s Man Crafters show airing this season. Today they will share their take on what can be created with chalk board vinyl and black or white dry erase vinyl. Whether it’s a baseball sports play clipboard or as simple as a grocery list, you’ll love their episode today.

The very talented Tiffany Hood has been playing with vinyl again! We love the ideas she comes up with using her electronic cutter and an old table she had. With some time and crafty patience she created this AWESOME children’s Play Table with vinyl!

What is Weeding? And I’m not talking about this kind of weeding either….

Weeding is what you do after you have cut your vinyl on our electronic cutter, you weed out all the parts of the vinyl you do NOT need.

X-acto knives work as a perfect tool for weeding (taking away the excess or negative space when using vinyl). Always keep a sharp blade, this will help you to “grab” the vinyl easier. Hold the knife at an angle, and poke the tip just under the vinyl and lift. This is a great way to weed letters or small areas in a design. You can use them to cut around a design, and only weed sections on vinyl off the backing so that you do not waste the entire sheet of vinyl with one design (be careful not to press too hard, you may cut through the backing paper) They are also great for popping any type of bubble you may have gotten during the installation process. Take a very sharp tip of the X-acto blade and poke the bubble, use your finger to press the air from behind the vinyl out through the hole.

This is what it should like when you are finished weeding your cut piece.

Jen Meyerwanted to give her daughter MacKenzie a gift that would help remind her about her first role in a local production of Oklahoma! So she found this darling cow collectable, with yellow flowers (her daughter’s favorite) and cut out the name of the play and year. Because face it, finding a gift that represented something like the musical Oklahoma! with the year on it, is probably very hard to find.

Sometimes the color of the soap matters as much as the label on it. But most times Amy Mitchellsay’s the labels look tacky and don’t coordinate with the decor in her bathrooms. So she decided to create her own vinyl soap decal for her kid’s bathrooms.

Now you’re probably wondering how Amy removed the brand writing off her liquid soap dispenser, right? Well some of the soaps you purchase have a removable label, but most I found did not. So here’s a trick… use Goo Gone to remove the printed image off the bottle. Sometimes it takes a little scrubbing, but keep it up to get a clean surface. Make sure you dry it completely before applying vinyl to the bottle.

Tiffany Hood felt like her wall need a little something, so she took her black vinyl from Brookie and create this beautiful quote and set out to add just what the space needed. I love how something as simple as a beautiful font and vinyl can totally change the look of a room.